“How did your day go?” she said.

Luke took another sip of his beer. He believed that when trouble was brewing, the thing to do was to get right to it. Beating around the bush was not normally his style. And Becca deserved to hear it right away.

“Well, it was different. Don is staffing the place up. And he dropped a project in my lap today.”

“Well, that’s good,” Becca said. “It’s good news, right? Something to sink your teeth into? I know you’ve been feeling a little bored by the job, and frustrated by the commute.”

Luke nodded. “Sure, it’s good. It could be. It’s police work, I guess you’d say. We’re the FBI, right? That’s what we do. The downside is, if I’m going to take the assignment—and really, I don’t have a lot of choice since it is my job—then I need to go out of town for a few days.”

Luke could hear himself hemming and hawing. He didn’t like the sound of it. Go out of town? Was it a joke? Don wasn’t sending him to Pittsburgh.

Now Becca sipped her water. Her eyes watched him over the top of the glass. They were wary eyes. “Where do you have to go?”

Here it came. Might as well put it out there.

“Iraq.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Oh, Luke. Come on.” She sighed heavily. “He wants you to go to Iraq? You just came from Afghanistan, and you nearly got killed. Doesn’t he realize we’re about to have a baby? I mean, he knows this, right?”

Luke nodded. “He saw you, babe. Remember? He brought you down to see me.”

“Then how can he even think of this? I hope you told him no.”

Luke took another sip of his beer. It was a touch warmer now. Not quite as delicious as a moment ago.

“Luke? You told him no, right?”

“Sweetheart, it’s my job. There aren’t a lot of jobs like this available to me. Don threw me a rope and saved my neck. The Army was going to say I had PTSD and put me out on my butt. That didn’t happen because of Don. I don’t have a lot of room to tell him no right now. And as things go, this is a pretty easy assignment.”

“An easy assignment in a war zone,” Becca said. “What’s the job? Assassinate Osama bin Laden?”

Luke shook his head. “No.”

“What is it then?”

“There’s an American military contractor over there that’s out of control. He’s looting old Saddam Hussein hideouts and stealing cash, artwork, gold, diamonds… They want me and a partner to arrest him. It’s not a military operation at all. It’s a police job.”